Commissioner Saltzman at a press conference for Portland Bike Share in September 2015.(Photos: J. Maus/BikePortland)

City Commissioner Dan Saltzman has been given a new assignment by Mayor Ted Wheeler: the Portland Bureau of Transportation. Wheeler announced the bureau assignments via executive order this morning.

Saltzman has had his council seat since 1999 — the longest of any other member — and this is his first time having control of PBOT. The bureau was previously led by Steve Novick, who lost his re-election bid to Chloe Eudaly in November. In Portland’s form of government, each commissioner (and the Mayor) are given oversight of city bureaus. They then advocate for policies and funding plans that are advantageous to their bureaus.

With PBOT in his portfolio, Saltzman can now guide one of the city’s largest bureaus and one that has a vast impact on people’s everyday lives. It’s unclear where exactly Saltzman stands on major transportation policies since he hasn’t played a pivotal role on the topic for many years.

A quick look at the BikePortland archives however does give us some clues.

From a cycling and transportation reform perspective, the most interesting thing about this assignment has nothing to do with Saltzman. The commissioner lives in the Hillsdale neighborhood of southwest Portland and has driven his car into work for many years (his office didn’t comment when we asked for specifics in 2014). However, his long-time chief of staff, Brendan Finn, is a daily bike rider. When Finn ran for a council set in 2008 we shared some of his bike-friendly bona fides. (We most recently saw Finn on a bike at a ride hosted by Mayor Hales to drum up support for a reconfiguration of Naito Parkway.)

Saltzman in 2010 (with Finn at his side) making a pitch about bike plan funding to the Bicycle Advisory Committee.

The biggest bike-related headlines Saltzman has made in the past decade or so was when he made a surprising pitch for bike infrastructure funding in 2010. Just before council was set to vote on an unfunded Portland Bike Plan for 2030, Saltzman walked into the monthly meeting of the city’s Bicycle Advisory Committee (with Finn at his side) and laid out a proposal that would raise up to $1 million per year for projects listed in the plan. The proposal had support from the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, but it caught other council members off-guard (and the BAC itself, which ultimately opposed it) and ultimately failed.

In 2012 Saltzman infamously opposed city funding for Sunday Parkways. He argued (over the objections of the mayor and other council members) that the popular open street event is not an essential, core function of PBOT. “It’s a great event and I love it,” he said, “But it’s not as essential to me as bike safety improvements or paving roads… The point is, we need more and safer routes for pedestrians and cyclists and a dollar spent there is more important to me that Sunday Parkways.”

Last month in a conversation at council about PBOT’s Vision Zero Action Plan, Saltzman said he believes we need more — and stronger — enforcement of traffic laws. “I believe in hardcore enforcement,” he said, before voting yes on the action plan, “We’ve become complacement and we are desensitized to the fact that people have 34 prior violations yet we still support people’s right to drive because they ‘have to get to work’… We can’t afford to do that… I think we need strong enforcement and more overtime patrols.”

Saltzman takes over a transportation bureau that is on a growth curve thanks to the gas tax increase passed by voters in May. The Fix Our Streets program is expected to raise $64 million for infrastructure projects over the next four years.

The new bureau assignments where part of a shake-up by Mayor Wheeler. He took the Office of Neighborhood Involvement away from Commissioner Amanda Fritz and gave it to Chloe Eudaly. Eudaly has also been given the Bureau of Development Services. Wheeler says he’ll re-assess bureau assignments and consider changes in the spring. Read more on the bureau assignments in the Willamette Week and read Wheeler’s executive order here (via Oregon Public Broadcasting).

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He had a point about Sunday Parkways. It’s primarily a recreational event for kids and families. It pains me to see so many resources poured into a few hours a year when that money would be better spent making streets safer for everyone, permanently.

But after five years that’s over $800k, which might add a few traffic diverters. Alternatively, that $163k could buy almost two full-time traffic cops. Now that would make a definite difference on the ground.

Sunday parkways would cost less if we didn’t go to such effort to making driving easy through, and especially across the route. $0.25/capita well spent, but we’re paying for the drivers, not kids riding bikes.

I don’t live in Portland, but if Saltzman was vested with this responsibility in my city I’d want to know how he travels and how much he uses each mode. Does he walk, use TriMet, or ride a bike EVER? Or is he an SOV guy exclusively?

I’m glad Saltzman got PBOT over Nick “people gotta get from A to B” Fish. Where does Saltzman stand on parking policy? Also, Fritz losing ONI is great news. Maybe this will mean less NIMBY influence, as Fritz is by far the biggest proponent of the neighborhood association model.

Saltzman has been very effective at getting new resources for the Housing Bureau, and for advancing its agenda in Salem. If Ted Wheeler keeps the Housing Bureau for the next four years he will be cutting the ribbons on a lot units that were funded while Saltzman ran the bureau.

With a possible statewide transportation package this year and/or a metro area bond measure in 2018 he could be very good for advancing PBOT’s interests.

Saltzman is going to be cutting the ribbon on a bunch of Adams/Novick stuff, too, notably downtown protected bike lanes that’ll be a live and visible issue around the time of his 2018 reelection campaign.

I’d expect Saltzman’s most serious challenge to come from the left, but then I’m sure Eudaly got a lot of votes from people who saw Novick as too far left on transportation and assumed (wrongly IMO) that Eudaly wouldn’t be. For a second-tier issue in a race that most people don’t know much about, the actual positions of one’s challenger may not be as important as not pissing people off.

Unfortunately, achieving long-term harmony on transportation is going to require pissing people off in the short term.

Other bits of bike infrastructure to wonder if Saltzman will be willing to piss some people off in order to get: – SW Barbur bike lanes … both short-term in the wooded section and long-term alongside the hypothetical MAX line all the way to Tigard. – NE 7th/9th neighborhood greenway, funded by the gas tax … 7th would be much better IMO but would require major diversion and therefore Oregonian headlines – actually connecting the soon-to-be bike-friendly Gateway district to other stuff: westward over and under I-205, plus eastward along Halsey – finally building the damn East Portland neighborhood greenways

Even if he keeps Treat or someone similarly progressive in place, getting those things right will require political action that only elected officials can deliver.

Other than the fact that he is a car addict, and these days it’s hard to find an elected official who isn’t, there seems to be a lot to like about Saltzman. Too bad this assignment doesn’t allow him any influence on traffic law enforcement.

I think it does give him some influence on enforcement. PBOT and the PPB are very close partners.. especially now with the Vision Zero focus. As such, Saltzman could use his influence to push for more enforcement and/or re-open the debate that happened at the Vision Zero Task Force where some members of the committee were concerned about enforcement being minimized because of racial profiling concerns.

The Vision Zero Task Force was smart to recommend minimizing enforcement because of racial bias issues. It would not be wise to override this decision based on the whims of a single commissioner’s desire for “hardcore enforcement”. Such an act would be demeaning to communities adversely affected by police brutality.

He doesn’t quite have the toolbox yet. He has kind of a trial toolbox that only includes speed cameras for as I recall 20 locations. We need to get the legislature to issue him a full toolbox. Although, PBOT has taken its sweet time in using the speed cameras it’s allowed to use.

I would support reopening that debate. I think the city absolutely must work to eliminate racial bias in policing, but I am not in favor of reducing enforcement of potentially life threatening behavior while that gets sorted out.

Again, not saying we shouldn’t try to fix the police system in this country. We absolutely should. However, the system has been purposefully designed to lock up people of color and keep them from being elevated to a higher class. It’s a modern form of slavery. PBOT cannot fix this themselves, so their only choice here is to distrust the police.

Our police and criminal justice system were designed to maintain power and control over people of color and other minorities, just like slavery was. Add in the concept of prison labor — which is quite literally slavery, plus our neoliberal privatization of prisons, and you have a system where corporations are benefiting off keeping people in jail for life. Combined with the fact that people of color are far more likely to be convinced and receive harsher punishments, thus making it harder to find work after getting out, increasing recidivism. So no, it is not hyperbole to consider our current system a modern form of slavery.

It is clear that our criminal justice system is flawed, and has plenty of room for improvement. But the rise of “mass incarceration” was not designed as a system for oppressing minority groups — it was primarily a response to public fears about increases in violent crime and fear of drugs. While it is clear that black people have suffered from this policy, and that they are often punished disproportionately for their crimes*, far more people are in prison for violent crimes than drug crimes.[1]

Likewise, the police changed in response to demands from the public — recall that as recently as the 1990s, NYC was experiencing 2000 murders a year; and Chicago, which has been in the news for its horrific uptick in murders this year, is seeing murder rates far lower than in than it did in the 1990s.[2]

Your attempts to portray the criminal justice system as being designed by an organized conspiracy of white people to hold down black people is, like most conspiracy theories, without basis. There are other, more compelling explanations for why we find ourselves where we are today.

* I have seen no data that compares the outcomes of poor whites with poor people of other races, so I am unsure where race ends and class begins in this matter. I reject your argument that race and class are one in the same.

I’m not saying we need to pollute our streets with ugly high-vis crash barriers. I’m talking more curb vs the usual paint. Drivers generally do a good job not running over low curbs. Narrowing of the roadways via building new curbs is far more effective than lowering speed limits – no need to even have to petition the state. PBOT could re-design outer Division for 20 mph speeds without even lowering the speed limit and people would slow down.

Perhaps ODOT could build one less highway interchange or road widening per year and give that money to cities to use for active transportation. Or PDC could not give $25M to PBOT to renovate a downtown parking garage, and use that money to build a secure bike parking facility that can generate revenue for future bike projects. Or we could toll the bridges to pay for traffic mitigation by improving streets to encourage cycling. I might even be okay with company-sponsored bike lanes as is done with Biketown and the Streetcar. The money is almost always there if the priorities are aligned and political will exists. Right now, our priorities are still far too skewed towards car-centricity.

What you are proposing would cost hundreds of millions of dollars; far more than a highway interchange or a parking garage rehab (even if that money could legally be used in the manner you suggest, which it can’t).

Maybe Trump will give us the money as part of his infrastructure package — that’s the most realistic prospect of the lot.

Hundreds of millions of dollars? How much do you think ODOT spends on highway expansion projects? The Woodburn interchange alone cost $70M, and that was just one project. Widening highway 26 in Washington County is costing between $26M and $31M. ODOT spent $130M on two miles of new highway, albeit that one at least came with a nice cycleway. FFS, we spend $175M just talking about building a new bridge! So don’t act like a few hundred million is a lot of money for a state DOT. If our state planned cycling and walking projects like they build new highways, we could have world class cycling and walking infrastructure city-wide – and not just for Portland, but for all cities around the state that are sick of overbuilt ODOT facilities cutting through their walkable downtown cores. Even a small fraction of that money would be a huge improvement. So no, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for one less highway project, and to use the money instead to build people-friendly streets. As we all hopefully know by now, none of these projects will actually solve the congestion problems they claim to, so why not spend the money on something that actually will?

Do you disagree when others take the position that the only way,,or at least a preferred way, to address unacceptable behavior by certain drivers is to reduce auto access for all drivers in the entire city?

A dear neighbor who happens to be a nurse gave me his definition of addiction: a habit that is either unhealthy for the individual or for society. Routine use of a car for intra-city transportation fits that bill, imo. Therefore, I use the term addict for those who engage in that activity.

Is there a problem with this as a working definition, or is the problem that the term addict has negative connotations that those who routinely drive don’t want to face up to?

Her comments here on the Biketown/mobility bikes issue indicated that she lacks a basic understanding of transportation systems. Combined with her lack of experience and we would have had a completely ineffective department at best.

Yeah, I wasn’t clear what her vision was for disability-proof bike sharing, either. But it’s not as if expecting a publicly funded transit system to meet the spirit of ADA, just on principle, is completely unreasonable. And if I had devoted a lot of my life to helping my son get around despite a disability, as she has, then I bet I’d be devoting a lot of energy toward championing ADA in every possible context.

Anyway, I didn’t really understand bike sharing when I first started learning about it. Did you?

I’m not here to stump for Eudaly or anything, I just think she could turn out to be one of biking advocates’ best allies on the council if she and bike advocates can understand and respect each others’ agenda and values.

I think Eudaly would have been a risky pick given her lack of experience and thin transportation agenda, but at the upper end of believability, she could have been awesome. Like the vast majority of Portlanders, and unlike the vast majority of Council, she lives on the eastside, and not the inner eastside at that (Montavilla if I’m not mistaken). She has lived experience that how some people get around is different from (and more difficult than, and less societally supported than) how others get around. Under the right circumstances, that experience could be productively applied to government policy regarding people who bike, walk, take transit, etc.

What made me shudder was her response to a question at one of the debates about parking. She supports requiring developers to provide parking for more then the market demands because she needs it for her son. Wait – you’re going to require of everyone something that increases housing costs and limits building opportunities because YOU want/need it? Didn’t seem very broad-minded or public spirited to me. What big picture are you looking at?

She is too singularly focused. Good leaders weigh many contributing factors and make reasonable decisions. Parking minimums are bad for so many reasons, and ADA requirements can still be met without requiring parking minimums.

“””I respect the work of the NW Parking SAC, as an almost 20-year former resident of NW Portland I know what a headache parking has become in the area, but I don’t support their proposal of a blanket minimum parking standard for all new multi-dwelling developments of more than 30 units. Knowing that these spaces are likely to be underutilized in many developments and that we must start decreasing our reliance on the personal automobile, I believe we can and must come up with a more nuanced approach, especially in a neighborhood that is so central, dense, and transit-friendly (many NW residents live within 10 blocks of the street car, Max, AND a bus line).”””

Maybe Saltzman can get busy on his first day sweeping up all the gravel in all the bike lanes around the city. Apparently, they laid it down for a few hours of effectiveness during the snow storm last month, and then it quickly takes up thick residence in the bike lanes where it remains forever until the city picks it up. I do not think the city should use gravel this way unless they have a written action plan and schedule for removing it.

Ha! and ha. I for one was happy to see a little gravel at certain times and places, and also pretty OK with paying OT to the public servants laying it out there. Crisis over, back to normal programming, it’s going to take a little while to pick it up. Good opportunity for some–gravel grinding? It’s a thing, right? Is this town not full of cyclo-cross racers, MTBers, fatbikers? Where is the gratitude?

Saltzman really needs to clear the air around the recent PBOT hiring of Millicent Williams (West?) … if it turns out that Treat and Williams were buddies in DC several years ago, AND that Maurice Henderson is in fact in a relationship with Williams, Treat needs to go, and so should Henderson … Williams bore the burden of being a convicted felon when she won a big job in PBOT, over 39 other applicants … Treat and Henderson hired Williams, but was it a case of cronyism ? … this story is not going to go away any time soon …

No, I don’t have any reason to think Treat would be asked to go — the biggest indication that she might be was in this Oregonian reporting and that’s apparently been proven erroneous, since Wheeler didn’t take transportation. (Also worth noting that Wheeler said in his mid-election interview with BP that the O overinterpreted his comments.)

Adams and Hales/Novick installed their own transpo commissioners, but Adams was criticized for the political appointment of Tom Miller. I could be wrong but I think Hales made the decision to dismiss Miller (and subsequently hire Treat) more in response to Adams/Miller rather than in order to create a new tradition of rapid turnover.

IMO, and as a community member of the panel that interviewed her and recommended her being hired, I do not believe that she’ll be “asked to resign” (fired) by anyone. I think there is a far greater danger she might quit in the next year or two to take a better job elsewhere, in a community where she’ll have more funding and power to make decisions than in Portland, and less frustration with the local form of government.